The next few posts on this blog are going to focus on something that I like to tell myself I know something about: how to write. Since audiences seem to like step-by-step guides, I’ll start with the two basic rules of writing. Know what you want to say. Be able to sum up your main […]
Today’s hottest buzzword is “onboarding.” A group of corporate Internet professionals has “onboarding” an official part of a major, inter-departmental project, as in “The onboarding phase will continue until buy-in has been obtained from a significant majority of players in this space.” See what they’ve done here: defined one buzzword with another in a passive […]
News item: Ontario sex ed: Protesters disrupt school meeting Protesters turned out in force at a Scarborough school Thursday night, disrupting efforts by two local MPPs to discuss Ontario’s new sex ed curriculum. The information session at Agincourt Collegiate Institute was cut short when demonstrators moved inside — chanting “We say no” at MPPs Soo Wong and Bas Balkissoon. The new curriculum has […]
“A camel is a horse designed by a committee.” That’s been attributed to more than one person, and it’s an excellent way to describe written documents that get approved by authorities who are more concerned about things other than the content of the documents themselves. In other words, documents produced by corporations and governments. Recently, […]
Don’t you just hate it when you see a typo in work you’ve just published, posted on a website or sent to a client? Every writer needs to learn how to proofread. As a professional editor for over 30 years, I have a few favourite techniques for effective proofreading. Here are some, plus a few […]
Title: A proposal to supply Acme Corp. with Blagfly Macroscopic Flange Background: In 20187, Ignati and Wilhelmina Lightblack noticed the diminishing return on investment of industrial-size household powersource applications for lightsabres. The siblings engaged upon a ten-year research project into the optimal application of flange technology in lightsabres. A side enquiry into the efficiency […]
Last week, the Ontario government published its revised health and physical education curriculum, which includes updated sexual education content. The update is actually titled The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1–8: Health and Physical Education. There is a separate curriculum for high school, grades 9 to 12. It covers much more than sex, in fact, all forms […]